Data Driven Pages: Dynamic Text Difficulties

[JeremyGoldsmith]

I'm working on a Data Driven Pages project for a Map Book of our townships in Salt Lake County. 

I am having a problem with dynamic text.

Can someone help?

Here is my dynamic text:  <dyn type="Page" property="PageNum_E" preStr="See Page : "/>

When I am on page 2 of my data driven pages, there isn't a GridIndex reference to the east and to the north.  Therefore in 'Layout View', I should see [empty] where the text is located for "PageNum_E" and for "PageNum_N".  If I export to PDF, I still see the neighboring static text of "See Page: " and I don't want it to show when I don't have a GridIndex in that location.  I want no text to display when there isn't a GridIndex in that location. 

The eerie situation is that the same line of dynamic text for "PageNum_W" works just how I want it to. 

I have attached a screen shot of my problem below...

How come this is happening?


[ATTACH=CONFIG]16900[/ATTACH]

[JoelCalhoun]

It seems to me from the help document that because "See Page : " might be a static element the string doesn't evaluate to blank so you will not see the [Empty String] message.  You would only see the [Empty String] when your dynamic text contains only the dynamic element.

Here's the imporant bit from the help:

If a dynamic text element string parses to nothing, you will see [empty] displayed on the layout. When the layout is exported or printed, [empty] text elements are dropped. You will not see these in your output. Displaying them in the layout view lets you know that a text element is present, but the value the dynamic tag is referring to is currently null.

The entire text element string is evaluated. For example, if you have the following text:

Map Credits: <dyn type="document" property="name"/>"

and the document doesn't have credit information,you'll still see Map Credits: on the layout because the parsed text element string is not blank. It has static text in it. If you export or print the map, Map Credits: will appear on the map. On the other hand, if you have the following text:

<dyn type="document" property="name"/>"

you will see [empty] on the display because the parsed text element string is blank.

I hope that helps,


Joel

[JoelCalhoun]

Jeremy,

Try this and see if it gives you what you want:

<dyn  type="page" property="PageNum_E" preStr = "See Page:" emptyStr=""/>

You still won't see [Empty String] in the layout but you should also not see the "See Page:" text if there is not an adjacent page.



Joel

[JeremyGoldsmith]

Joel,

I appreciate your help on this.  I tried your line of (dynamic text) code already and the emptyStr="" doesn't remove the preStr="See Page: ". 

Even when I just enter this line of code:

<dyn  type="page" property="PageNum_N"/>

It doesn't return a [empty] on my layout view like it should.

Any other suggestions?

[JeremyGoldsmith]

Joel,

Is it because I am working in a 9.x version of ArcMap with an ArcInfo license?

[JoelCalhoun]

Jeremy,

Well I don't know how that could be, Data Driven Pages only came out at the 10.0 release.
Also your screen shot from your first post looks like 10.0.

I'm not sure why it's not working for you, the code I posted worked for me.




Joel

[JeremyGoldsmith]

Joel-

Thanks for the support.  We are going to try and open my .mxd on a different computer with a newer OS and better hardware to see if anything is different.

I'll re-post if it is a success and delete this Thread.

Cheers,
Jeremy

[JeremyGoldsmith]

Joel-

Does it make a difference if my Grid Index and Parcels are individual shapefiles? 

Do I have to be working out of a geodatabase for the dynamic text to work appropriately?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[JoelCalhoun]

Does it make a difference if my Grid Index and Parcels are individual shapefiles?

Do I have to be working out of a geodatabase for the dynamic text to work appropriately?

Jeremy,

I don't believe there is any problem using an index grid that is a shapefile.


Best of luck,


Joel